Down And Dirty:

Undercover Boss Brings CEOs and its Audience Down to Earth

The reality show puts CEOs in the place of the everyday worker. 

Today in corporate America there is a massive detachment from the everyday worker whose blood, sweat, and tears go into their job to the executive who is caught up in strategic planning in their climate- controlled office. CBS's show Undercover Boss attempts to bridge that gap by disguising and inserting CEOs of well- known companies such as Waste Management, Hooters, and 7-Eleven into the everyday environment of their employees. This dramatic shift can be shocking as the big bosses see the real life struggles and accomplishments of the people who are the hands and feet of their companies. Viewers have the privilege of seeing the difficulties the undercover CEOs have in completing everyday tasks within their company, the revealing of their true identity to the workers they came in contact with, and also hearing the opinions and revelations that both the bosses and the employees have during the process. The show offers CEOs the chance to better understand what it is like to be "on the front line" and it gives viewers an opportunity to analyze the inner-workings of corporate business in America. 

O' Donnell struggles working
on the trash assembly line

Coby Brooks disguised
as an employee

A central purpose of Undercover Boss is to give its CEO participants a taste of a day in the life of an employee on the front line of their business. Stepping out of their leather dress shoes and into a pair of work boots is a humbling experience for the CEO and a satisfying sequence for the viewer, who will most likely be able to identify with those employees the CEO will be working beside. Their struggles to complete everyday tasks as front line workers are magnified within the episodes. The president of Waste Management, Larry O' Donnell, is put to the test on a trash assembly line. He fails to sort out a large piece of cardboard which jams a machine. In an on-the-fly interview, his feelings of defeat and frustration are portrayed. As June Deery discusses, interviews like these contribute to the overall narrative of the show and shape the viewer's understanding (75-76) of the CEO's experience. They are often used within an episode to emphasize the challenges that the bosses face due to their lack of hands- on skills. After a day spent as a back of house employee, Coby Brooks, the CEO of Hooters, says he is really tired and doesn't believe that his performance would warrant the manager to welcome him back. The CEOs come out of the experience with a new level of empathy for their workers. Denise M. Cumberland and Meera Alagaraja's study (Cumberland and Alagaraja, 2016) on what the bosses learned from their experience on the show includes a discussion of the difficulty they had performing the roles of workers and the uncomfortable conditions employees sometimes deal with. These difficulties foster a greater understanding of what working for their company is really like. 

 Hands- on experience may prove difficult for the bosses, but what hurts even more is when they see how the policies they've implemented are affecting employees. In the episode with Waste Management's CEO Larry O' Donnell, we see a woman who admits she doesn't stop for bathroom breaks during her route because of time constraints and quota she must meet. O' Donnell is appalled by this and says he "feels like a male chauvinist" and that he has "never thought about it". He sees the negative effects of his push for productivity. Seeing the realizations the CEOs have about the daily struggles their employees have portrays the disconnect present in many businesses. Viewers may be shocked by this disconnect. One of the goals of the show is that these bosses will take what they have seen and make changes that will make working for their company a better experience.

Viewers of Undercover Boss are surely not strangers to the frustration that comes along with working for a corporate company. That's what makes this show so marketable. It's pretty laughable as an employee to see a big boss get his hands dirty. Most workers would greatly appreciate if their own boss did the same. Watching that whole sequence and the experience of the CEO is refreshing and relatable for the viewer, and it's what keeps their attention. As Chuck Barney (2010) points out, it applauds the everyday worker's contributions and offers lessons of humility to the "big- cheese executive".

Joe DePinto awards an employee
with his own store to manage

In addition to its relatability, viewers of Undercover Boss are left feeling uplifted at the end of an episode. CEOs offer generous rewards to the exceptional employees they worked beside. 7-Eleven's CEO Joe DePinto was so impressed with one employee that he gave him a store to manage along with a resort vacation as a recognition of his hard work and dedication to the company. Mike White, the CEO of DirecTV, offers a warehouse worker an opportunity meet with the Vice President of Supply Chain and share his ideas about how to make things work more efficiently. These rewards for the lucky handful of employees the CEO came into contact with are notable. Critics such as David Hinckley of NY Daily News pose the question of whether there will be far- reaching changes that affect the vast number of workers of these companies. After watching the show, the feeling a viewer gets is that the CEO's experience was eye- opening enough to at least give them a more empathetic viewpoint when making decisions.  

An episode of Undercover Boss offers a unique perspective. Not only for the CEO, but also for the viewer. Most of the audience are people who go to work every day and understand the great divide between the executives at the helm and them. The show gives people a little hope. Seeing these CEOs being willing to step down and understand the day to day life of their employees can be both entertaining, but also refreshing. The sparks that Undercover Boss has thrown could quite possibly put a fire in both the hearts of the everyday worker and the boss who has been out of touch. 

Works Cited

Barney, Chuck. "TV show ‘Undercover Boss’ plops chief executives into the trenches."                   MercuryNews.com. Bay Area News Group. 4 Feb. 2010. Web. 3 Feb. 2017.

Cumberland, Denise M., and Meera Alagaraja. "No Place Like The Frontline: A Qualitative Study     On What Participant Ceos Learned From Undercover Boss." Human Resource Development             Quarterly 27.2 (2016): 271-296. PsycINFO. Web. 8 Feb. 2017.

Deery, June. Reality TV. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2015.

Hinckley, David. "CBS' 'Undercover Boss' is an hour of feel-good television for underappreciated     workers." NyDailyNews.com. 10 Feb. 2010. Web. 2 Feb. 2017.